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news
Statue of Justice, Old Bailey (licensed CC BY 2.0 on Flickr by Ronnie Macdonald).jpgBike rider fined £440 for “dangerous cycling”
A man has been fined £440 after being convicted of dangerous cycling by magistrates in Buckinghamshire.
The Bucks Free Press reports that Jack Lang, aged 25 and from Old Wolverton, committed the offence on 5 February this year on Hardwick Road, Woburn Sands.
He did not enter a plea, but was found guilty on 4 August at a hearing at Wycombe Magistrates’ Court. He was also ordered to pay £154 costs.
The circumstances of the incident that led to Lang being charged were not reported, and we have sought clarification from Thames Valley Police, which is responsible for policing in Berkshire, Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire.
Dangerous cycling is an offence under section 28 of the Road Traffic Act 1988 (as amended), which states:
(1) A person who rides a cycle on a road dangerously is guilty of an offence.
(2) For the purposes of subsection (1) above a person is to be regarded as riding dangerously if (and only if) —
(a) the way he rides falls far below what would be expected of a competent and careful cyclist, and
(b) it would be obvious to a competent and careful cyclist that riding in that way would be dangerous.
(3) In subsection (2) above “dangerous” refers to danger either of injury to any person or of serious damage to property; and in determining for the purposes of that subsection what would be obvious to a competent and careful cyclist in a particular case, regard shall be had not only to the circumstances of which he could be expected to be aware but also to any circumstances shown to have been within the knowledge of the accused.”
Given the offence with which Lang was charged, however, it appears that no-one was injured by his actions, otherwise he would more likely have been charged with causing bodily harm by wanton or furious driving under the Offences Against the Person Act 1861.
Whatever the circumstances – and we will update this story once we have been able to establish them – one thing the case does highlight is that whatever the mainstream media narrative over the past week or so, cyclists are subject to road laws, and can be punished for breaking them.
The main reason such cases seldom appear before the courts, however, is that the focus of police and prosecutors when pursuing road traffic offences is placed on incidents in which most harm is done, whether that be someone sustaining serious injury or losing their life – and in the vast majority of those, the accused will have been driving a motor vehicle.
Simon joined road.cc as news editor in 2009 and is now the site’s community editor, acting as a link between the team producing the content and our readers. A law and languages graduate, published translator and former retail analyst, he has reported on issues as diverse as cycling-related court cases, anti-doping investigations, the latest developments in the bike industry and the sport’s biggest races. Now back in London full-time after 15 years living in Oxford and Cambridge, he loves cycling along the Thames but misses having his former riding buddy, Elodie the miniature schnauzer, in the basket in front of him.
Latest Comments
- hawkinspeter 5 min 59 sec ago
It would make sense to me that driving without a valid license should automatically count as Dangerous Driving as it falls far below the standard...
- hawkinspeter 36 min 57 sec ago
I like that, though I usually revert to calling them Liverpool Neighbourhoods to practise the accent
- IanMK 37 min 59 sec ago
I think TVP have improved their response in...
- Timbobean 58 min 34 sec ago
As a bit of an aside, what is everyone's experience with phone thefts from mounts such as these? Is it as common as phone snatches out of people's...
- rogerwb 8 hours 16 sec ago
Jump off the bike and run across. I cycle in trainers though.
- momove 9 hours 3 min ago
Cheers for the lesson! Wasn't expecting one so was pleasantly surprised, especially getting to find the origin of "laconic"!
- ktache 9 hours 50 min ago
Isn't it a rights issue?
- Daddy Feebs 10 hours 53 min ago
If anything, it looks a bit like an SL6
Add new comment
38 comments
Good to see cyclists being held to account. Since I had a guy go through a red light and hit me on a crossing, luckily my mobility scooter took the brunt of it, I hope to see more and more cyclists held responsible when they break the law. Start sending in head cams of yourselves running reds and riding on the kerb when you shouldn't.
WRONG!
We need to see drivers being held to account
...
What happens when you use a camera is that you have to ensure that you follow the law other wise you can't submit anything or you take a chance if you do.
What exactly do you hope to achieve on a cycling site ?
If you carry on like this, then you'll just get a pile on from people who know rather a lot about road traffic laws and roadcraft since they need to know that to avoid being a KSI.
Sounds like your username should have '...but Blinded by other BS'. I am sorry you had a run in with a person on a bike, it's a good job it wasn't a person in a car though as going by statistics you might not have been so lucky.
So I would usually say a new user with this sort of username and a Daily Mail-style comment should piss off as it's blatant trolling, but I've been told in the last few days by certain people (a whole two of them) that that's bullying and ruining the website...because obviously this sort of crap really enhances the experience for everyone!
Only you could conflate someone clearly trolling and regular posters on this site.
Must try harder.
In certain cases a regular poster is a clear and obvious troll who decides to stay around to continue trolling, e.g. Garage, Socratic etc, two of the most notorious trolls on this site, both of whom I believe got up to around 2000+ posts before they were banned. Only you would be unable to see this.
Must try not to use so many meaningless cliches.
I did wonder where the second post was. I hope you are careful on your mobility scooter as over a report in late 2019 showed in the five years previously 28 pedestrians were seriously injured as a result of collisions with mobility scooters. Another 100 individuals were slightly injured.
I'm sorry that you were hit. But that was a single rogue. My sister was hit (and almost killed) by a driver who went through a red light on a multi lane crossing in London.
Does her experience trump yours? No. But statistically, which mode of transport is more dangerous to users of crossings - cars or bicycles?
Also, if you can evidence "riding on the kerb" apart from Danny MacAskill then I'll eat a small hat.
mad skills, is riding on something less than 5" wide part of training for a crossing niagra by riding a bicycle on a tightrope attempt?
I know nothing about mobility scooters, have never used one but once had my car slightly damaged by someone using one. Luckily I wasn't in it at the time or might have got whiplash. I also read this on an internet recently.
"Data released in Autumn 2019 by the Department for Transport (DfT) has reported that 249 accidents involving mobility scooters were recorded in 2018 across Great Britain, up against the 236 in 2017.
Out of the 249 recorded accidents in 2018, 180 accidents occurred on roads, whilst 69 arose on pavements and footpaths.
The figures also reveal that male mobility scooter drivers were involved in more incidents than female drivers, with 139 accidents involving men and 99 including women – 11 were recorded as unknown."
Therefore I feel I have a very strong opinion on disability scooter operators requiring licences, registration, MOTs, training, hi viz, helmets and insurance. Furthermore they are obviously No1 road menace and the Police should invest all available manpower to remove this scourge from our public roads.
You were lucky! I was crashed into by a lycra-clad speeding cyclist while I was parking my new 4x4 outside Tesco's in a dedicated disabled parking bay (thankfully I still have my blue badge from when I was 23+ stone and my GP agreed that my limited mobility meant I needed a blue badge to enable me to get closer to the shops for food shopping). On this occasion the angry cyclist shouted something at me like "maybe if you walked a bit further you wouldn't be so big and wouldn't need to drive such a stupid big car" which seemed highly irresponsible especially since I pay road tax on my vehicle and I'm sure he doesn't pay any road tax. Actually I think I may get my road tax included with my blue badge, but that's not the point, cyclists should still be made to pay road tax because apparently I read in the Daily Mail that cyclists don't agree with driving cars so most of them don't pay road tax anyway on principle!
I hope your mobility scooter was OK. I had to get my wing mirror replaced after this scary incident. We need to stick together against this lycra lout brigade!
You know you are all sad bunch when you spend so long commenting on a matter about which practically no details are known.
I couldn't see the point in posting on something with scant detail.
Would be interested in what the cyclist did.
Well I have to disagree. I'm no Poirot, but partial to a who dunnit and the more mystery the better!
Whilst details are thin, the question of roadie or rascal has possibly been answered in the comments, albeit with some slightly unsavoury to and fro.
Surely unless we know what this person did, commenting on whether or not the conviction/sentence was fair or not is kind of pointless...?
Hmmm.
Just off the phone to Wycombe Magistrates Court, after a ramble though the phone system, and they say there is nothing on record beyond the bare bones reported.
Charge, verdict, outcome, punishment.
I think I read somewhere that he did not appear in Court, so I wonder if this is some kind of default verdict following basic guidelines.
As to what the chap did in such a short piece of road - perhaps nearly hitting a pedestrian, or child or using a mobile device and doing similar. It is a residential road. That is speculation, though.
You can FOI a Magistrates Court, so would anyone care to put one in and ask for the file?
Seems Socrapi is a stickler for getting facts and data against cyclists. Seems to be a job for him.
TBH, until this case, I didn't even know there was a dangerous cycling (and also a careless cycling) statute. You would have thought that when these were brought in, they would have updated the 1861 one that all the papers moan about.
However, my main bugbear with this and the driving equivalents is the willingness of the CPS to jump to and allow Careless driving so easily for stuff like speeding, pavement mounting, passing mere inches from a vulnerable road user, etc, yet cyclist doing same things is instantly dangerous and nothing else. Why the willingness to mitigate one and not the other.
"against cyclists"?
I'd say it's about an informed conversation. You can't say the cyclist here did the 'same things' because no one knows what he actually did.
We have a chimps' tea party of outraged 'motorists' making random allegations on the basis of no knowledge whatsoever.
Without information the conversation has no content imo, other than assumptions and a leaning tower of assertions.
Since I can't get any more info easily, I'll stop conversing
.
This is intriguing. I'm struggling to think of a situation that could involve a road bike on this short stretch of road. So my hunch is it's a MTB/Dirt Jump rider due to the close proximity of Woburn bike park. Did they pull an impressive manual all the way from the bike park past Nonnas cafe, where police on a break spotted their antics?
riding no hands while removing/donning a gilet?
Pretty sure driving without hands on the steering wheel is only seen as careless, if even charged.
That's a good point, and it does look likely this was a road cyclist and possibly on a club ride.
I feel a little bit bad about doing some Strava sleuthing, but there's a lack of detail in the newspaper report, it looks likely that there were some injuries...
Offence happened 5th August. Strava is 5th Feb.
The date of the 5th August is incorrect, the date given in the Bucksfreepress is the correct one of 5th February 2022.
I note that the Team MK website events calendar has a club run listed out to the Claydons for that day, which is in the right direction for where this incident occurred.
Could be a coincidence of course, but if this did occur as part of a group ride, it would be useful to know of the circumstances.
Oops, should have expected a road.cc error.
If it happened on the club ride, he's probably been done for using disc brakes on a group ride, with hand the luddite club members testifying that any careful and competent cyclist knows this is dangerous.
If I read this correctly the "offence" happened after the person was found guilty? Is this the reality of one of those time travelling films? Can you be found guilty of a crime before you have actually committed the crime?
Justice delayed is justice denied!
So glad our courts are working overtime to rid our streets of this scourge!!!
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